By Will Kuhns, Senior Editor

A closer look at this year's NCAA Division I men's tournament reveals some odd decisions by the selection committee.

The committee put a very high premium on strength of schedule, but placed little emphasis on conference tournament results.

All the high seeds went to teams from the five most successful conferences in recent NCAA history: the ACC, Big 10, Big East, MVC and Pac-10.

This year's upstart teams such as UNC Greensboro, UC Santa Barbara, and New Mexico were not rewarded for beating teams from those major conferences. It didn't make much sense.

The seedings seem to indicate that your conference's NCAA tournament history means more than this season's results. In the past seven years, the only teams outside of those five conferences to make the College Cup were Saint Louis and Santa Clara. And since 1996, only eight teams from outside that group have even made the NCAA quarterfinals.

But UNC Greensboro beat all four ACC teams it faced — including top seed Wake Forest. UNCG went 4-0-0 against teams that made the tournament, and got seeded No. 8. Wake Forest's record against tournament teams: 7-5-1 (See chart below).

So that verifies a much stronger schedule, but was UNCG supposed to schedule 12 top-level non-conference games? UCSB and New Mexico both beat Indiana, the No. 2 seed. It's almost as if those games didn't happen, according to the committee.

The bracket also seemed to ignore certain conference tournaments. Virginia, fresh off beating Wake Forest and Maryland, got seeded behind both. But the Cavs probably aren't complaining too loudly, since they await the winner of American-Long Island — a preferable pair when compared with FIU-Central Florida or Seton Hall-Hofstra, the winners of which play Wake and Maryland, respectively.

Memo to college coaches: Tell your AD's that the number of games against top-level opponents is more important than the results of those games. If you're in a traditionally weaker conference, well, tough.

SEED (Record vs. 2004 tournament teams)

1. Wake Forest (7-5-1)

2. Indiana (6-4-0)

3. Maryland (6-4-0)

4. Virginia (6-2-0)

5. Notre Dame (5-1-2)

6. UCLA (4-2-1)

7. SMU (4-1-0)

8. UNC Greensboro (4-0-0)

9. UC Santa Barbara (4-1-1)

10. Penn State (5-3-5)

11. St. John's (3-4-2)

12. Old Dominion (2-3-1)

13. New Mexico (4-0-0)

14. Creighton (3-2-1)

15. Boston College (6-2-0)

16. VCU (4-4-1)